Iraq War Policy Failing, Says Official Report

President George Bush insisted yesterday that he had a winning strategy in Iraq even as a White House report said the Iraqi government had failed in its efforts to stem violence and bring about reconciliation.

The 25-page report released yesterday found satisfactory progress on only eight of 18 crucial benchmarks set by Congress for gaging the success of Mr Bush's strategy, and these were largely in the military realm. The report found little or no positive movement on political goals.

It looked certain to increase the pressure on Mr Bush to change his strategy in Iraq and begin withdrawing US forces. However, he indicated yesterday that he would continue to resist such a course. "I believe we can succeed in Iraq, and I believe we must," he told a White House press conference. "As difficult as the fight is, the cost of defeat would be higher."

While the number of Iraqis killed in sectarian violence and car bombs has fallen, Nouri al-Maliki's government has made few advances on the political front.

The government has failed to ease conditions for former members of the Baath party; devise an equitable revenue-sharing formula for Iraq's oil resources, or pave the way for local elections.

The report attributed such failures to last year's eruption of sectarian violence. "The levels of violence seen in 2006 undermined efforts to achieve political reconciliation by fuelling sectarian tensions, emboldening extremists and discrediting the coalition and Iraqi government," the report said. "Amid such violence, it became significantly harder for Iraqi leaders to make the difficult compromises necessary to foster reconciliation."

The report forecast a further rise in violence in Iraq over the next few months.

Mr Bush pleaded for patience, arguing that the last of the 30,000 extra troops deployed in Iraq had only been there since mid-June. "I believe we are making security progress that will enable the political track to succeed as well," he said.

In a further attempt to buy time, Mr Bush said he was sending the Pentagon chief, Robert Gates, and the secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, to the region early next month. Mr Bush's appeals for more time will win little support on Capitol Hill, where there is growing frustration, even among conservative Republicans, with the White House war strategy.

When the administration's benchmarks for measuring progress in Iraq first surfaced last year they were seen as a way of maintaining pressure on the Iraqi government to achieve realistic goals - while alleviating some of the anxieties of the US public about its commitment to Iraq.

However, with yesterday's report putting many of those goals out of reach, it has become even more difficult for the Bush administration to pursue its present course, and resist demands for a troop withdrawal. The perception that further time would not alter the situation in Iraq was strengthened by a report in the Washington Post yesterday that quoted the CIA director, General Michael Hayden, warning last November that the Iraqi government's failures seemed "irreversible".

Senator Joseph Biden, the Democratic chairman of the foreign relations committee, told reporters: "This progress report is like the guy who's falling from a 100-story building and says halfway down that everything's fine. If we continue the way we're going...we're headed for a crash landing."

Mr Bush took a conciliatory tone yesterday towards his critics on Capitol Hill, and said he was willing to be flexible on Iraq. He called Republican dissidents "friends of mine". He also acknowledged that Americans were war-weary. "There is a war fatigue in America. It is affecting our psychology," he said. "It's an ugly war."

However, those gestures did not translate into any real change in policy. Mr Bush is unwilling to change strategy until September when General David Petraeus, US commander in the Middle East, and Royan Crocker, the US ambassador to Baghdad, are due to report on the war. Until then, he made it clear he would resist any change in course, despite the dissent in Congress.

"I don't think Congress ought to be running the war," he said. "Trying to run a war through resolution is a prescription for failure."